Canada will miss 2020 climate target, says environment commissioner

The federal government is poised to blow its 2020 climate change target, federal Commissioner of the Environment and Susatinable Development Julie Gelfand said today.

Ottawa didn’t equip itself with the tools to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions set out in international agreements, said Gelfand, who tabled her fall report in Parliament this morning.

The federal government also never gave much thought to telling the public how it planned to meet its targets, she added.

The forecast follows a pattern set by the Canadian government in the early 1990s — of over-promising and failing to deliver on its climate change commitments.

Canada will be churning out 111 more megatonnes of GHGs in 2020 than it said it would in 2010, when it joined an international climate effort in Copenhagen.

Ottawa is now focusing attention on a 2030 target for GHG emissions, which were included as Canada’s contribution to the Paris agreement signed in 2015.

“We found that Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) was no longer working to meet the 2020 target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions set out in 2010 under the Copenhagen Accord,” the report says. “The Department did not show that existing regulations to reduce emissions would be sufficient to meet that target.

“We found that the Department shifted its focus to meeting a new federal commitment, made in 2015, to contribute to global emission reductions by 2030.”

In 2010, the federal government said it would reduce GHGs emissions 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020. In 2015, it said it would reduce emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

Canada has to reduce its GHGs emissions by 219 megatonnes to meet the 2030 target, the report says.

The failure to meet the 2020 target can be blamed in part on a change in government.

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) missed a chance to get closer to the 2020 target by abandoning industry-specific targets in 2016, a approach favoured by the Conservatives.

But Liberal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, despite focusing the bulk of her statements on the 2030 commitment, has not publicly admitted that Canada won’t meet the 2020 target.

And in the years since 2014 — a period during which both Conservatives and Liberals have been in power — ECCC has only initiated two regulations aimed at reducing GHGs, says Gelfand’s report.

Even the results of those regulatory changes have not been properly communicated to Canadians, says the report.

“We found that the Department did not consistently report to the public on the results of implementing regulations for reducing emissions. For example, it did not always follow the planned reporting schedule, publish reports on time, or make all reports public.”

The forecast for the 2030 target isn’t too promising, either.

While Ottawa made progress on the climate file by bringing almost every province and territory under one agreement to reduce GHGs, its plan to meet the target is still fuzzy.

The federal Liberals have not introduced legislation to create a national carbon price benchmark, a key component of the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, Gelfand’s report says.

And the federal government is still not publishing information on how the provincial and territorial measures included in that deal will add up to the 2030 target, it says.

ECCC’s response to the charge that it’s ignoring the 2020 target has been to reinforce the 2030 objective and say a “number of measures” underway will help meet the 2020 targets.

And the department has improved some of its reporting of emissions to better reflect the uncertainty in some of its predictions, and to acknowledge the ongoing debate over how forests should be considered in international climate change monitoring, the report says.

In a news conference after the report was tabled, Gelfand said the 2030 target is at least supported by what’s likely the best plan among the seven created by the federal government to address climate change since 1995.

“The plan that we now have, the Pan-Canadian plan, is likely one of the best plans we’ve seen to date and that’s because the provinces and territories were involved and participated,” she said.

She also said that while the Liberals have been in power for two years, they spent one year getting the Pan-Canadian plan in place.

“We have to give them time to bend the curve,” she said.

The Liberals defended their plans by saying they inherited a flawed one from the Conservatives.

“For a decade under the previous government, there was no plan and there was no action,” said McKenna, the environment minister, speaking to reporters in the afternoon.

But the government is actually falling behind because it didn’t change Canada’s targets from the previous Conservative ones when they came to power, the NDP said.

“The Liberals adopted Stephen Harper’s weak targets and now it’s clear that they will fail to meet the 2020 targets, let alone the 2030 targets,” NDP environment critic Linda Duncan said in a statement.

The failures underlined by Gelfand’s report cast a pall over the government’s efforts as it prepares for a critical international meeting on climate change set for next month in Bonn, Germany.

Negotiators are supposed to come with a work plan in Bonn to put the Paris agreement into action — a complex effort, given divisions over GHG monitoring and the voluntary nature of national submissions to the United Nations body that is helping guide global efforts.

The federal Liberals also will likely face new pressure from newly-elected NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who is opposed to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and the Energy East pipeline project because of their anticipated impact on Indigenous rights.

The Liberals approved Trans Mountain last year on the argument that oil and gas development should continue as national climate change policies come into play.

Gelfand also took aim at the government’s preparations for climate change and its financial support for clean technology in her fall report.

ECCC has not provided the leadership needed to get departments ready for the physical impacts of warming temperatures, rising seas and more frequent forest fires, Gelfand’s report says. The federal government has around $66 billion in tangible capital assets, according to 2016 figures.

Since 2011, the federal government has spent $538.6 million on preparing for climate change, the report says.

Sustainable Development Technology Canada, a federally-funded arm’s-length foundation, adequately reported on the GHG reductions that it hopes will come from its investment in demonstration projects, the report says.

But Natural Resources Canada still doesn’t report on what it expects to achieve through the multitude of smaller projects it funds.

And the commissioner’s office couldn’t find a signed risk assessment document, a financial due diligence document or a contribution agreement for one of three large demonstration project, the report says. Ottawa spent $83-million on all three projects.

Correction: An earlier version of this article mistakenly said the federal government spent $83-million on one large demonstration project, not three.